The State House Medical Centre got N1.9billion as budget for the period 2015-2017, not the N11.01billion being reported, Secretary of the State House, Jalal Arabi, said on Sunday.
The medical centre has come under intense criticisms over lack of drugs and equipment at the facility.
The wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, on 9 October, lamented the poor state of health facilities in the hospital despite the huge budgetary allocation to it.
As a result of Mrs Buhari’s criticism, the House of Representatives, on 12 October, inaugurated an ad-hoc committee to investigate the matter.
However, Arabi, in a statement by his media aide, said out of the total capital appropriation of N2.9billion and recurrent appropriation of N465.9million for the period under reference, only the sum of N969.6million (representing 32.97%) for Capital and N225.5million (representing 48.41%) for recurrent was actually released.
He also revealed that there was zero capital allocation for the Medical Centre in 2017.
The lawmaker said out of the N331.7million being recurrent appropriation for 2017, the actual amount released up to September was N91.3million, representing 27.5 per cent.
He explained that the above figures are verifiable from the Ministries of Finance, Budget and National Planning.
“During the three-year period under review (indeed two years since no capital allocation for 2017), and despite the shortfalls between budgetary provisions and actual releases, the Centre continued to provide free services to the over 10,000 registered patients annually,” the statement read in part.
